When they removed the bandages
from Justice's eyes, she had long since 
gone blind.  She had been too many days
in the dark, too long alone with
the scale in her numb hands; she could
no longer tell the true from the false.
She had stood so many years in the cold
outside the courts, as the law rushed 
past, clinging to the sleeve
of power - until the chill
had turned her veins to marble,
her eyes to opalescent stone.


Yet those who tore the veil away
could swear they were being watched,
and though it must have been a bit of glass
that caught a ray of sun, it was not unlike
a bright, appraising eye.  Whatever it was,
they felt caught out, ashamed,
and late at night, at home, they locked
their windows tight and slipped into the room
where the children slept, and looking down
on them - for what they couldn't say - they wept.



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